not like prepping a candidate. >> was it hard to prep george w. bush? >> not so much. but i saw the same dynamic in 2004. probl president bush had not been debating in the primaries. thought he knew all the issues. he's dealing with them every day. didn't know how to frame the attack, frame the defense and he didn't do that well in his first debate with john kerry. i think exactly the same thing here. with obama sitting in those meetings saying i know this stuff, i deal with it all the time, but he hadn't been forced in a debate setting to say these are the offensive argument, defensive arguments these are the three points i want to make and i think that was part of his problem. >> i think one of sort of malpractice moments, the most obvious was the two-minute closing statement. you're a speechwriter, you're a columnist now, you prepare presidents. how does he not have a narrative? we talk about narratives and it becomes slangy, but telling a story, with a start, middle and end and he had a two-minute closer that sounded as chris mathews said, memorably, sounded like a